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Bret Baier

Last week Former Vice President Dick Cheney volubly defended the CIA’s torture funplex enhanced interrogation techniques performed under his administration. In an interview with Fox’s Bret Baier and then more at length to Chuck Toddon Meet the Press he made numerous arguments in defense of the torture program, none of which are testing well with the fact checkers — not surprising, given that he hadn’t even read the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report for at least one of them.

First PolitiFact rated Cheney’s claim that terrorists were not covered by the Geneva Convention “mostly false,” writing:

Cheney has a point that unlawful combatants are not afforded as high a level of protection as prisoners of war or civilians. However, his comment glosses over the fact that unlawful combatants are still accorded a minimum degree of protection, including a ban on “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture,” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment,” both of which have been validated by the Supreme Court.

PunditFact (a related venture) next called Cheney’s claim that Saddam Hussein had a decade-long tie to al Qaida “entirely false,” just short of their worst rating of “Pants on Fire,” writing:

“Two comprehensive, high-level government reports largely refute that statement. That includes one Pentagon study that relied on a trove of secret Iraqi government documents that fell into American hands after the invasion.”

Cheney also refuted an argument of Todd’s — roughly that waterboarding sure was a crime when we prosecuted Japanese soldiers for it after World War II — by arguing that we actually pursued them for a bunch of other, worse atrocities.

“Cheney dismissed too cavalierly Todd’s question about the prosecution of Japanese soldiers for waterboarding. One could quibble about whether these practices were exactly like the techniques practiced by CIA interrogators. But Todd raised a legitimate question and, contrary to Cheney’s assertion, waterboarding was an important charge in a number of the lesser-profile cases. Moreover, waterboarding also resulted in at least one court martial during the Vietnam War.”

Perhaps the prime benefit of the talking point is its complete imperviousness to any countervailing force: a talking point true two minutes ago remains true now, regardless of anything that may have occurred in between.

See you now Fox News host Bret Baier, who appeared as usual on Fox & Friends Monday morning to discuss the insurgent crisis in Iraq, but declined to take the hosts’ setup and criticize President Barack Obama’s weekend round of golf, instead reminding the hosts that there were no easy answers in Iraq.

“There has been a lot of criticism of the president taking this four day holiday for Father’s Day golfing and then doing fundraising, and he’s been criticized for his inaction, that he’s just considering all these military options,” guest host Anna Kooiman said. “What do you say?”

“There are a lot of lawmakers who are bringing that up,” Baier said, but then added:

“The bottom line is that what to do about Iraq is pretty complicated, because once the U.S. gets involved in some way shape or form militarily — and the president has drawn the line that no boots on the ground will be there — you have a different animal. The other thing is that Iran is now actively inside Baghdad. And essentially their special operations forces, the head of that is now working with the iraqis. So it is a very three-dimensional chess complicated deal…I think there is the frustration is that there aren’t a lot of options, that the Iranians have a lot of influence inside Iraq. That is a scary prospect for people who are worried always about Iran wanting a neighbor they could control. You essentially have Iraq breaking up in to three parts. of Sunni part, Kurdish part, and Shia part. Vice President Biden talked about this years ago, but it may be turning out to be what it is.”

To which Steve Doocy replied: “And this as the president golfs.” It’s as if Baier was never there.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is doubling down on his assertion that Barack Obama is a “food stamp president” by suggesting that the current White House resident doesn’t even think “work is good.”

During a Fox News debate in South Carolina Monday, moderator Bret Baier lobbed the former House Speaker a softball question, asking if he supported 99 weeks of unemployment benefits. The Georgia Republican is on record saying, “I don’t want to pay people 99 weeks to do nothing.”

“The help we ought to give them is to connect them to a business-run training program to acquire the skills to be employable,” Gingrich explained. “Ninety-nine weeks is an associate degree.”

“It tells you everything you need to know about Barack Obama and the five of us [Republican candidates] that we actually think work is good,” he added to the delight of the conservative South Carolina audience.

“And we think unconditional efforts by the best food stamp president in American to maximize dependency is terrible for the future of this country.”

Later in the evening, the audience booed moderator Juan Williams for asking if Gingrich had “belittled the poor and racial minorities” by declaring that black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps.

This topic should stay on the frontline of political news. It is the reason for the turmoil in the debt crisis and other Obama set agenda including jobs bills that the republicans refuse to pass for partisan reasons.

The GOP is willing to literally tank the economy of this country so that they could win in the next general election.

Even with the country on the brink of default, the Senate’s highest ranking Republican says his “single most important” goal is to make Barack Obama a one-term president.

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told National Journal‘s Major Garrett in October.

Fox News’ Bret Baier asked McConnell Sunday if that was still his major objective.

“Well, that is true,” McConnell replied. “That’s my single most important political goal, along with every active Republican in the country.”

“But that is in 2012,” he added. “Our biggest goal for this year is get this country straightened out and we can’t get this country straightened out if we don’t do something about spending, about deficit, about debt and get the economy moving again. So our goal is to have a robust vibrant economy to benefit all Americans.”

McConnell told Baier that a “Grand Bargain,” where Republicans agree to tax hikes in exchange for cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, was likely off the table.

“I think it is. Everything they told me and the Speaker is to get a big package would require big tax increases in the middle of the economic situation that is extraordinarily difficult with 9.2% unemployment. We think it’s a terrible idea. It’s a job-killer.”

“Nobody is talk about not raising the debt ceiling,” McConnell later insisted.

Taking a break from debt limit talk, the Senate’s top Republican also said that it was time to send more terrorism suspects to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

“They are going the try a couple of foreign terrorists in Kentucky, my state, whose fingerprints were found on IED’s in Iraq. These foreign terrorists are enemy combatants. They should be taken to Guantanamo. They should be tried in military commissions.”

A feud has broken out between Rush Limbaugh and the so-called “All Star Panel” on Fox News’ “Special Report” over the panel’s praise for President Obama’s speech at the memorial for the Arizona shooting victims. Speaking on his radio show Thursday, Limbaugh slammed the panelists–which, on the night of the speech, were Brit Hume, Charles Krauthammer and Chris Wallace–for their positive comments.

“They were slobbering over it for the predictable reasons,” he said. “It was smart, it was articulate, it was oratorical. It was, it was all the things the educated, ruling class wants their members to be and sound like.”

On Thursday night’s “Special Report,” host Bret Baier played the Limbaugh clip and asked Krauthammer–who had called the speech “quite remarkable and extremely effective”–for his reaction.

“As one of the three slobberers…I find it interesting that only the ruling class wants a president who is smart articulate and oratorical in delivering a funeral oration,” Krauthammer said. “It’s an odd and rather condescending view of what the rest of America is looking for in their president.

Fox News will mark 2010 as one of the best years since the network’s launch in 1996. The network posted powerful ratings, beating the combined ratings of CNN and MSNBC and marking the ninth straight year as cable’s top news network.

According to Nielsen, the top five cable news programs in terms of total viewers and viewers 25-54 (the metric used by advertisers and considered the most important by networks) were all on Fox: The O’Reilly Factor (781,000 viewers 25-54); Hannity (585,000); Glenn Beck (572,000); On the Record (481,000); and The O’Reilly Factor repeat (447,000).

In terms of total viewers, Special Report joins the top five cable news shows, as host Bret Baier has taken the show to its highest ratings ever.

Fox’s dominance is demonstrated by its ranking across all of cable–coming in as the fourth highest-rated network in primetime (total viewers), right behind USA, ESPN, and TNT. MSNBC is ranked #28 in primetime, CNN came in at #32 and HLN was #37.

As Fox remains the power player in cable news, CNN’s year has been one of notable declines–Nielsen marking this CNN’s lowest-rated year in primetime (for both total viewers and viewers 25-54) in 14 years. For the full day, 2010 marks a tie for CNN’s worst year ever (viewers 25-54).

Comment from the Raw Story article on Fox News’ irrational hatred toward the President:

Obama was born in Hawaii – full stop.There are of course opportunists, racists and morons including many people who watch Fox News who cannot bear the idea that a black man is both their superior in intellect and President.

Fox News is helping a former Republican congressman spread the myth that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

Appearing on Fox News Monday, John LeBoutillier explained that his new fictional book uses “real things” like Obama’s grandmother once claimed she was present for his Kenyan birth.

LeBoutillier’s new book, The Obama Identity: A Novel (Or Is It?), seems to be referring to a 2008 World Net Daily article where a Pennsylvania man is said to have a telephone recording of Obama’s grandmother.

“Ed Klein and I, when we wrote this book, used real things in a book of fiction,” LeBoutillier told Fox News hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade.

“There’s so much real stuff in this book. Like you asked me before we came on the air about Obama’s grandmother living today in Kenya. And we have her in the book. It’s fiction but in reality, she has claimed consistently that he was born in Mombasa, Kenya. She said this adamantly on the record. We took that and used it in the book in a very funny way,” he said

[…]

It’s not the first time Fox News has given a platform to birther notions. In July 2009, Fox News anchor Bret Baier reported that a US soldier was refusing to deploy because Obama was not born in the US. “Baier never pointed out that Obama’s American birth certificate has been produced and authenticated,” News Hounds noted.

In August 2008, FactCheck.org confirmed that it had examined and verified Obama’s birth certificate.

“I got to give you credit, Wendell, for getting a lot of crazy people in one question,” Gibbs replied.

“I’ve said this many times, Wendell. If you’re — if after I asked that the President’s birth certificate be put on the Internet hasn’t dissuaded you from where he was being born, I’m almost positive that no argument is somehow going to dissuade you from that,” Gibbs added